19.8.16

Buyma's latest bikini designs are leaving so little to the imagination, fashionistas are questioning whether it's even suitable for the beach.

The racy bikini, pictured on their website in a royal blue colour, definitely flaunts the model's curves with every inch of her body on show.

Just about covering her modesty, the strappy wonder would certainly give any brave bikini-goer some funny tan lines if they used it to sunbathe in. At $38, it's a lot of money for something that's barely-there.

The bottoms - usually modelled on a design going back hundreds of years - are undeniably futuristic.

People who take part in BDSM sex activities (bondage, discipline/dominance, submission/sadism, masochism) are less likely to hold attitudes consistent with rape culture, research has found. Victim-blaming attitudes are less widespread as well as acceptance of so-called rape myths in sexual violence cases, according to the study. The reason for this could be because the BDSM subculture has “affirmative consent norms,” says Kathryn Klement, co-author of the study

2.11.15

Whips, chains, collars, gags, blindfolds, handcuffs, knives… My eyes roam the soundproof room in which we are enclosed. The subject of our conversation is BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Sadism, and Masochism), a discipline that includes a wide variety of consensual power-exchange activities suggested by the various implements on display.

“Whether they are soldiers or victims,” Leslie Rogers explains, “there is nothing that binds people together better than war. What I'm re-creating in BDSM is like war—but in re-creating war, I'm ending it. I'm going to a place with you where I shouldn't go, and we’ll meet there, and in the end we’ll realize that we are still capable of being loved.”

1.11.15

Wet (psychoanalytical) dreams

John Huston as the father of the Marquis de Sade in De Sade (1969)

Getty Images We have 19th Century psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing to thank for the term "sadomasochism" along with two writers, the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. The Marquis was keen on kidnapping women, cutting into their flesh and then suturing the wounds with hot wax. He spent over 30 years in insane asylums and wrote prolifically on the subject of sex and pain. Leopold was more into submission. He reenacted his novella Venus in Furs with his mistress by signing a contract that bound him to being her slave. He revelled in being dominated and the physical pain from being whipped.Richard von Krafft-Ebing introduced the terms "Sadism" and "Masochism" in a medical context, defining fantasies of receiving or inflicting pain as signs of being psychologically disturbed. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was understandably upset by this (and Marquis de Sade was six-feet under so he had little to say on the matter.)

newshour.com.bd: Iceland’s Directorate of Health has no objection to the country following the lead of all the other Nordic countries and removing BDSM behavior from its list of mental illnesses, reports Iceland Review.

The head of the Directorate has invited the leader of the Icelandic BDSM Association to a meeting on how best to acquiesce to the Association’s request for its members’ sexual preferences to be removed from the list.

Birgir Jakobsson, head of the Directorate of Health, revealed his position to RÚV following news that Iceland is the only Nordic country which still classifies BDSM as a mental illness.

BDSM stands for Bondage, Dominance & Submission and Masochism and covers such a wide range of sexual practices which are indulged in by so many people at regularities ranging from once in a lifetime to daily, that self-identification is usually the only way of recognizing the “disease”. The BDSM Association thinks this is inappropriate in the modern world, and the Directorate of Health agrees.

Earlier this month the Association sent the Directorate a letter formally requesting that BDSM be removed from the mental illness list—thereby following the footsteps of Finland in 2012, Norway in 2010, Sweden in 2009 and Denmark in 1994 and 1995.

Asked how it came to be that Iceland is so far behind the times, Birgir said that the matter has not come up in any pan-Nordic meetings or projects since he took on the job and that it is therefore very good that the BDSM Association took action to bring the matter to the Directorate’s attention.

He says that he is in agreement with the point-of-view raised in the Association’s letter and sees no reason for Iceland not to follow the example of its neighboring countries.